“So, what you’re telling me is that I’m some sort of magical battery?”
Both of them paused then laughed. To be quite honest, Arwen wasn’t sure but something about Helen seemed somehow more than the average and tonight she was about to find out.
“Oh, shit, Helen, you’re funny. Ja, if you want to look at it like that. My aunt says that some people are born with the chance that they may be really powerful with magic and stuff. It takes a little nudging but if what I suspect is true then we’ll know when we see the results.”
“What results?”
“Oh, like stuff. You’ll see. It’s nothing scary.”
Truth be told, Arwen was nervous tonight and she didn’t know what to expect. She’d practiced the ritual until she could do it with her eyes closed, without relying on her script. The words of welcoming for the Guardians of the Quarters were inscribed on her heart. Yet, when faced with finally practicing the real thing, her hands shook and her mouth was unaccountably dry.
She set up her altar before the owl-shaped headstone then motioned for Helen to stand to her right. Arwen poured the wine into the goblet then placed the salt in its bowl. A circle drawn with a stick demarcated their sacred space around the gravesite. Some of what she did was based on what she’d read on the internet and in Aunt Sonja’s books but much of it she based on her own gut feeling.
So long as no one disturbed them tonight, everything should be fine.
“Right, now you take off your shoes,” Arwen commanded.
“No thorns?”
“Shhh. Just do what I say.”
Helen complied and the two girls stood for a while before the makeshift altar.
“Breathe. I want you to relax, inhale, exhale and try to forget about all the shit that’s going on at school, at home, everything.”
This was fine for her to say. Her own heart hammered so hard she could feel it beating in her collarbone. Her stomach roiled and the joints in her knees wanted to disintegrate.
Why was she so nervous? There was absolutely no reason for this. But, perhaps, it was because this was the real thing–no more practicing.
Aunt Sonja always said your own words worked better than someone else’s. This should be a cinch. What could possibly go wrong?
Taking her dagger, the wine and the salt, which she sprinkled, Arwen cast the circle, starting at the north and walking around in a clockwise motion. By this time, her voice had stopped shaking, although she had to admit she felt the fool for speaking the words out loud.
What if Helen thought her crazy? She stilled these doubts, lest her tongue stumble. Imperceptible at first, by the time she’d called upon the Guardians of the Quarters a faint stirring in the air around her suggested a measure of success.
To quantify whatever this was in everyday terms was difficult, except that their sacred space had become somewhat clarified. The cricket chorus in their vicinity had fallen silent. Helen’s eyes were big and Arwen did not have to squint to see the spinning, fiery motes congregating like fireflies above her companion’s head or deny the definite singing in her own veins that tugged at her.
Now, for the evocation. Arwen positioned herself before the headstone. She tried to shrug aside her fierce exultation that this was working.
A twig cracked–a noise out of place–from the other side of the wall.
Oh shit! Someone was here.
Helen called out. “I can see you there, behind the tree.”
Darn girl had pluck though she deserved a slap for being so stupid. Arwen couldn’t see Jack diddly squat. Narrow skeins of alarm constricted her chest and she hastily put out her candles.
“If it’s the cops, we’re gonna have hell to pay,” she muttered. “Help me, Helen, don’t just stand there gawping.”
Helen was oblivious to Arwen’s request, leaving Arwen cursing beneath her breath while she bundled her tools into the altar cloth. Maybe next weekend, with Etienne helping...
“Oh, it’s you,” Helen said, relief in her tone.
“Who is it?” Arwen asked as she slipped on her shoes.
“It’s the boy I met the other night. Trystan, right?” Helen toed on her flip-flops.
A shadow separated from the darkness of the poplar tree overhanging the cemetery.
The boy wasn’t that much taller than Helen–still taller than Arwen by a head–perhaps no older than them, but there was something indefinably different. No, wait, wrong, about him, about the tightness in the way his skinny limbs were placed each time he took a step.
In the light of the stars, it was quite evident that he was paler even than her. He wore a pair of cut-off denims with a black t-shirt, and moved like a cat. Long dark blond hair had been tied back in a messy ponytail and something feral gleamed in his eyes, catching what little illumination there was.
He’s the other piece, her Wyrd said, and once again the strings of Arwen’s Wyrd tightened.
Dismay grabbed her by the guts. Although the boy’s aura buzzed, he wasn’t human. He was a vampire. Nightstalker. For once words failed Arwen. These creatures weren’t supposed to live out here, or so her father had assured her.
Chapter 12
Heeding the Call
In the end, Trystan had spent five nights shaking Mantis off his tail. The last thing he’d wanted was for her to follow him back to Graaff-Reinet and on to Nieu Bethesda.
Instead, he’d driven back down the N9 National Road, spent a day in Uniondale–without picking up hitchhikers this time–before he’d slipped onto the R62’s tight curves through Oudtshoorn.
He had been conscious of her attempts at reaching for him for three days, her brief ghostly flickerings tantalizingly close, brushing up against his nape but he’d stopped only to refuel and hole up, sometimes resting on Rose’s back seat covered in a pile of old blankets.
Twice Mantis had inadvertently overtaken him–she drove a gleaming black BMW with tinted windows–but he stuck to his plan of doubling back often, taking dusty farm roads and getting back onto the tar–or leaving it–only once his skin started raising blisters in the sun’s glare.
Constant glances in his rearview mirror had been the norm, and Rose overheated on more than one occasion. Hunger was his constant companion, he’d needed to feed. The maintenance of a hyper state of awareness and pushing his body to its limits always took its toll.
He’d found a drunk farm-worker outside of Calitzdorp then took a road plunging through the folded sandstone cliffs above Riversdale.
Granted, traveling this close to known renegade territory had also been a gamble, but a move Mantis would not expect. When he’d made it safely through the Outeniqua pass without suffering ambush at the most likely points, he’d gripped the leather-bound steering wheel with less fervor.
He’d rolled down the window and allowed Rose to slow down to a cruising speed of ninety kilometers an hour. The burned-bitter brush smells of the Karoo, the flat, ribbon-like expanse of the N9 ran ahead of him. Back on familiar turf.
This time no pale woman waited twenty kays outside of Uniondale, although he still sped up until he’d passed the small town.
Halfway in the middle of nowhere, in the heart of the Camdeboo plains, he’d stopped the Hudson, gotten out and stood for a long while, drinking in the stillness. He’d wanted to savor this moment, with the distant hooting of an owl, the sense that this ancient flat and bone-dry land had waited a million years and could quite easily wait a million years more.
Would he still be here, then? The oldest vampire he’d heard of was based in Cairo, and claimed to have been Cleopatra the Seventh’s lover. He couldn’t fathom such an age.
Could he spend so long running–always running–from the others, from himself?
No moon this night and the stars shone clearer and brighter than he’d seen since forever. The magnesium-bright flare of a meteorite ignited, searing across the west, where his preternatural vision could still detect the last flame of sunset licking the horizon.
The land was so e
mpty. If he walked out now, he’d be lucky if he encountered so much as a jackal. He could be dragged into the vacuum of space to drift for eternity between suns.
Thought of the eternal void hurt his brain.
He needed to escape, but where? Rose’s warm leather-smelling interior had beckoned and he’d sunk into the well-worn driver’s seat with a groan, his flesh molding to the contours he’d worn into the upholstery over the years.
The engine had roared into life, bringing a certain satisfaction. Trystan knew every part of this machine as intimately as he’d known some of his lovers. He’d taken her apart and put her back together so many times he bore the knowledge of every cog, gear and piston, of the different timbres of her engine, when she needed oil, when a part needed replacing. He’d lost count of the years they’d been together.
They encountered few cars that night, yet Trystan had driven past the turn-off to Nieu Bethesda three times, to make sure no one followed.
They’d crested the first pass and traversed the plateau, and he’d relaxed only once Rose’s nose dipped and they entered the green river valley that had been his sanctuary for so long.
In the distance, the lights of the hamlet winked merrily. He’d slowed at the bridge, waiting for a kudu bull, whose magnificent horns curved with deadly spirals.
The beast had paused in the headlights, its eyes lambent in the glare. With a twitch of its withers, it sprang into the darkness. Trystan had had a good few near misses with these in the past. He might survive an incident but if anything should happen to Rose he’d be hard pressed to salvage her.
He’d seen his fair share of accidents involving wildlife. These deaths were never pretty and he wasn’t sure who he’d pitied the most, the injured humans or the antelope that more often than not were not quite dead, broken bodies spasming in a tangled mess of twisted metal and shattered glass.
He’d felt a spike in aetheric energies when he reached the pear avenue. Essence! Even without reaching, he’d sensed the inexorable pull, as if a giant vortex had opened up in the sleeping hamlet, sucking at him with its drag.
The power coiled and turned, vibrating, a beacon he could not ignore. Who was it? What were they doing? Never before had he encountered anyone among the undead who could harness that amount of potentiality. Part of him hungered and another felt fear. Surely anyone that powerful could destroy him without blinking. How could this be happening in this tiny village? Whatever it was, it must be related to the Wareings. If he’d been sensible, he would have removed them long before they became a threat.
Trystan had nosed the car into the garage. The most important thing was to find out what the devil was going on, deal with the problem, then figure out if anyone or–any thing else–had awakened with this event.
Whatever or whomever was responsible for this disturbance would be alerting every sensitive and every other being with half an inkling of Essence for half the province, if not farther. This had been a sudden flare, a geyser of power. Who had released it and why?
Panic gripped him so he ran rather than walked down the road leading to the cemetery with its adjacent show grounds.
Essence caused the small hairs on the back of his arms and neck rise. Trystan had run along the wall, keeping low when he heard the voice of a young woman.
He’d allowed himself to reach, recoiling in surprise when he’d encountered the Essence of not one but two youngsters.
One was the young Wareing girl–one of the witches–whom he’d successfully avoided for the past fifteen years. The other was Helen, who blazed in the aether.
So much Essence, so powerful...
His gut tightened. She must learn to shield, or else... Or else what? Another vampire, for one.
Like him?
When he reached a poplar tree near the wall, he’d pushed himself against the lichen-encrusted trunk.
What in all hell’s damnation was the Wareing girl up to? Did she have an inkling of the effect that she was having? Not even her aunt and the father did as much with their excuses for rituals.
He leaned forward, cursing inwardly when he put his weight down on a dry twig that snapped loudly like a firecracker to his sensitive ears. Now that was stupid. He must be losing his touch, not focused enough on staying hidden. In response, the vortex of power faltered, slewing as its rotations slowed.
The two girls were busying themselves with some sort of witchery at her grave. Visions of baleful glass bottle-eyed owls filled his mind.
Arwen muttered something but he had eyes only for Helen, who approached him, unafraid.
Superimposed over her features was something else, a vaguely anthropomorphic, diaphanous shape almost visible to plain sight. It shifted blue-green, at the edge of manifestation, its medusa-like tendrils writhing at her head.
What in heaven’s name...
“Oh, it’s you,” she said.
He shook his head, trying to dispel the fog that threatened to swamp his reasoning.
Arwen spoke again, with Helen turning to reply but he could not grasp the words. The Essence in the area dissipated, and Trystan’s vision returned to normal. Now only fiery motes flickered in and out of existence around Helen’s head.
He vaulted over the wall. No reason to remain hidden, not when they knew he was there, although the nagging worry of the Wareing girl and her family would be a risk he had to take.
She was just a girl. They were both just girls, he told himself, trying to see them as the frail human creatures he knew them to be.
“What were you trying to do?” His anger flooded away any uncertainty. Stupid, stupid girls. They had no idea, did they? “Do you have any idea what sort of trouble you are stirring up?”
Arwen shouldered a sling-bag. Her fear was a sharp tang in the air. Helen, however, radiated only the calm green of curiosity.
“No, you tell us,” Arwen said.
For a split second, static crackled as reality shifted.
Footsteps, doors slamming. Voices, roughly two hundred meters down the road.
Someone was coming. Someone knew.
“You’re messing with things you don’t understand,” Trystan hissed.
Arwen squirmed behind Helen, as if she tried to make herself less of a target.
Oh, the witch girl knew they’d been messing with stuff they shouldn’t, all right, and unfortunately Helen’s ignorance of her situation would only endanger her.
“What do you know about any of this?” Helen gestured about her.
“Enough!” Trystan snapped. Footsteps approached, beyond mortals’ hearing. They were coming–people who know, most likely of the Wareing clan. They would not be happy finding him here with their daughter.
Perhaps if he could persuade Arwen, she might keep this secret. That might also prove impossible among those who traded in secrets, though.
“Come with me.” Trystan took hold of Helen’s wrist. “We need to talk, but not here. You as well, Arwen.”
Helen resisted for an instant, before complying.
“Helen! He’s a–” Arwen started.
“Don’t!” Trystan commanded. “I won’t hurt either of you. We just need to get away from here.”
Arwen didn’t look convinced but the two girls followed him back over the low wall. He kept away from the road, keeping in line with the cemetery, farther toward the hills, and cut diagonally across the show grounds.
“Where are you taking us?” Helen asked.
“Shhh! I’ll explain once we get away from here.”
Trystan had them walking until they reached the poplars bordering the river. They dropped into the shale-crusted bed and followed a dry furrow. In the pale starlight he caught sight of numerous fossils embedded in the stone. On any other occasion, he’d stop to trace the chalky outlines of the remains, and attempt to tap into the memories of millions of years ago. Some vampires could read the past. He hoped to evoke the same abilities himself.
Not tonight. The girls stumbled, not able to see as well as he did in t
he dark. They followed the watercourse, sometimes crossing through the water–there had not been much rain this year–then crossing back.
Soon, they reached the bridge that would take them back into the village proper.
“What was that in aid of?” Arwen asked. She seemed to have worked through her initial fear.
Helen sat on a rock and fiddled with her flip flop. “I got something stuck in my sole that’s hurting my foot.”
Trystan reached in the direction from which they had come, sensing only Arwen’s father’s presence among the stones in the graveyard. Good. Then the white witch had not ventured out. The last thing he wanted was for their kind to start meddling. Things always got messy when that happened.
Now, what to do about Arwen.
She scowled at him from beneath her fringe, her gaze darting from him then back to Helen, who hummed under her breath while she picked at her shoe.
“All right. An explanation,” Trystan said but what was he going to say? How much would he say? “There’s more to your little ritual than you’d think, Arwen.”
“No shit, mister,” Arwen answered. “So, why’d you come muck it all up?”
“You were succeeding far too admirably in your venture. You were about to...” If they hadn’t, already alerted the wrong people.
“What?”
A human whose Essence was awakened was far more dangerous, and unstable, than a pack of vampires.
“You were endangering Helen’s, and your own, life.” That wasn’t a lie.
“I fail to see how,” Arwen said.
Helen spoke. “We were just summoning the spirit of the place.”
Arwen nudged her hard and gave her a filthy look but Helen’s gaze was leveled directly at him.
That was what he was afraid of, although not exactly for those reasons.
Trystan shuddered as some of the implications of this near disaster filtered through.
Camdeboo Nights Page 7
